Twenty years to the day after the death of local writer, Hanna Greally,
community radio station RosFm broadcasted a new radio documentary
about her legacy and her life in Roscommon. The programme aired for
the first time on Wednesday, August 15th 2007 at 6pm.
Hanna Greally (also known as Johanna or Joan Greally) was born in Athlone
in 1925. At the age of nineteen she was admitted to St. Loman’s psychiatric
hospital in Mullingar where she was detained, against her will, for almost 20
years. Despite several escape attempts and numerous letters to her relatives
to claim her out, Hanna remained in St. Loman’s until 1962. She spent some
time in rehabilitation and re-training in Coolamber House before working as a
cook and housekeeper in Ireland and in England. In 1971 Hanna saw the
publication in Ireland of ‘Bird’s Nest Soup’, her moving first-person account of
life inside Ireland’s psychiatric hospitals in the 1940s and 1950s . In the early
seventies she came to live in Fourmilehouse, Roscommon where she spent most
of the remainder of her days after the ‘Big House’. She was a regular
contributor to the Roscommon Champion writing letters, poems and other
autobiographical pieces for the paper. Hanna Greally died on 15th August 1987
‘Remembering Hanna Greally’ is a very personal programme based on Hanna’s
own writing and on the accounts of some of her closest friends and neighbours
in Roscommon. It explores her experience in hospital and her life afterwards
as a member of the local community. The contributors to the programme
include Finola Mc Crann, Eithne Quinn, Una Ní Chuinn, and Iris and Séan Allen
(Fourmilehouse). Dr. Eilís Ward, formerly a journalist with The Roscommon
Champion and now lecturing in politics in NUI, Galway also reflects on the value
of Hanna’s legacy in understanding the stigmatisation of mental illness in
Ireland.
Bird’s Nest Soup was published twice, in 1971 and again in 1987. It’s now out
of print but copies can be borrowed from Roscommon public library. Extracts
from the book are used in the documentary with permission from Cork
University Press. Programme producer Mary Owens points out ‘Hanna Greally
suffered great injustice and indifference in her life but she never lost her voice
and now twenty years later, a new generation can hear her story and
appreciate her legacy’.
‘Remembering Hanna Greally’ was produced by Well Said Productions for Rosfm.
It was made with the support of the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland’s
‘Sound and Vision’ production funding scheme.

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